Daily Sports: Baseball Comes Back On Friday

Baseball is back today, and one of the game’s historic rivalries—though admittedly one the networks have hyped to excess over the last eight years—will be on center stage in the daily sports world. It’s the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox meeting in Fenway Park tonight at 8 PM ET.

It’s a “neutral broadcast” as MLB Network will send its team of Bob Costas and Jim Kaat to call the game, rather than just beaming in the local feed of the home team. Believe it or not, this is the first visit the Yanks have made to New England this season. They trail Boston by six games in the AL East and also have Baltimore and Tampa Bay in between them, so the Yanks have to play the season with urgency—not panic, not “must-win”, but a sense of urgency.

The sports buildup during the day will come from across the pond, as its Day 2 of the British Open. Golf coverage will be on ESPN, and go all day, starting at 7 AM ET and going for eleven consecutive hours until the dinner hour here in America.

TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage during this week has looked at revised predictions, as I try to back away from my preseason picks with the gracefulness of a politician backing away from an unpopular position. I would also refer you to last week’s coverage, which took all six divisions and summarized them in a statistical snapshot. Since we haven’t had games since Sunday, this content is still pretty timely.